


Für Alina

by Dragunov



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ficlet, From a prompt, Gen, Jim plays piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragunov/pseuds/Dragunov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a tumblr prompt: Moriarty's childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Für Alina

**Author's Note:**

> Für Alina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zrD9JiA_i4

Jim Moriarty knows that memories never decay.

Because he remembers all the songs he was taught as a boy. Brahms, Bach. Memory lingers in the labyrinthlike lobes of the brain, never lost, coming back like flashbulbs at the touch of a specific texture, the smoothness of the white keys, at the sent of lavender like his mother’s old perfume, at the sound of a note so achingly true.

He remembers his father’s military uniform, crisp and pressed. He remembers his father in it, and he remembers it hanging limply in the closet, covered by thin plastic. He remembers sitting down for dinner with his two brothers, steak and potatoes on that table, between his mother and father at either end. His eldest brother asked their father if he would pass the salt, please.

His father replied, “Would you pass the salt, please, _sir_.”

And the Moriarty brothers shifted in their wooden backed chairs so that they all sat a little straighter.

When he makes his first million as a consultant, Jim buys himself a Fazioli, and when he sits at the piano bench it is with perfect form. Sebastian lounges on their couch and watches with curiousity as Jim suddenly falls silent, where a second ago he’d been a flood of praise for the handmade Fazioli brand; but his fingers are sliding across the keys for the first time, his eyes wide and sad. He plays Für Alina, a song which starts in darkness - low bass he holds with the pedal - and ends in sadness - soft like rain, where the silence between the notes - the waiting - becomes more than the music.

He remembers the sway of his mother’s crucifix as she whispered her prayers, from bead to bead, like a time signature from God.

He remembers his father criticizing the way he turned his sheets, and so he learned to play by heart. With his head bowed, his eyes closed. And he plays until he finishes, because his father could never cope with an unfinished melody.

When the final note falls still, he feels Sebastian’s hand on his neck. He tilts his head into the touch.


End file.
